Visualization authoring is a technique for representing data as images that can aid in understanding various attributes of the data. Generally, visualization authoring is based on manipulating an underlying scene graph. A scene graph, for instance, represents a data structure that organizes displayable visual objects in a hierarchy and records object information, such as spatial groupings and visual attributes. For web-based visualizations, conventional techniques typically leverage a document object model (DOM) for scene graph implementation, but the DOM is generally not accessible to average users (e.g., non-programmers). Thus, many users cannot leverage the DOM to manipulate the scene graph and author visualizations.
In some instances, predefined templates are provided to users to more easily create visualizations, but these templates generally do not support visualizations that do not fit into specified typologies of the templates. Thus, users cannot generate creative visualizations that are not supported by the templates, but are limited to prescribed designs of the templates. Because of these limitations in the conventional techniques, scene graph manipulation remains challenging for the average users.